The PUP celebrated its 60th. anniversary today and to mark the singular occasion, party leader John Briceno made a special visit to the place where it all started, George Price's home on Pickstock Street in Belize City.Briceno made the call on the National Hero and the only living member of the party's first executive at ten this morning. When the People's Committee, which would later become the PUP was formed in the crucible of the nationalist movement in 1950, Price was the General Secretary and John Smith was the first leader. Price became party leader in 1956 and served uninterrupted until 1996. The meeting to form the People's Committee was held in Price's Pickstock street home.

After visiting with Price, Briceno addressed the rotary luncheon and is tonight in Cayo for the western caucus's celebration and he will visit Corozal this weekend.

Espat Says It’s not Looking Good For His Party

And while Briceno will be in Croozal this weekend - thre of his deputy leaders were there today. According to a release Cordel Hyde Francis Fonseca and Mark Espat joined with PUP Corozal South East Area Representative Florencio Marin Jr. in working visits to the San Joaquin and Calcutta Primary Schools.

The release adds that the group hosted a meeting and lunch with members of the Corozal South East PUP Executive Committee.

And while they did that to celebrate the anniversary, to bring it in Espat appeared on the Adele Ramos show on KREM TV last night. When asked squarely what are the PUP's chances for winning the next election, he said, not great:…

Adele Ramos"How optimistic are you that the PUP can really make a strong comeback for 2013. Mr. Briceno says by the way that he will be leading the party until those elections."

Hon. Mark Espat"Well the elections is going to be very difficult for us to win. I don't believe in creating expectations that we cannot fulfill. I think they are winnable and they are winnable as a said this administration is not delivering on the many promises. However I think we are falling far short of that bar of readiness and we are in a deep electoral hole; let's be clear about that at this time we have only 6 out of 31 seats. We did not win any of the 9 municipalities, the 2 cities Belize and Belmopan or the 7 towns and we lost a significant majority of the villages. Now having said that I think that the time is right for a reawakening for a re-energizing of our party we have got to be even more worthy than a political party under normal circumstances would mean at this stage of the election cycle. Why is that? Because we are 11 or 12 percentage points behind at least by any measure. When the UDP won the municipal elections last year in 2009 for the first time they won by 60% and so we got to recognize the hole that we are in [ Adele - you measure the hole] we are not going to get out of that hole by pretending that everything is ok. There are some people who I would call the pendulum addicts; they believe that all we have to do is just wait and the people going to get tired of the current government and they are going to come back to us. I am not one of those pendulum addicts; I believe that you have to be worthy of governance."

Espat, Hyde, Fonseca and Marin Jr. have written to the party leader making certain demands for reform and stating that if those go through, they would be willing to serve as deputies. That call was not heeded and as it currently stands they will not be serving on the executive…